10 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make

If you are starting a blog as a hobby or as a full-time career, be aware of the common mistakes others do and never get into a habit of developing them.

Fail to define target audience

More likely blogging as a pastime than a serious business, these bloggers write whatever comes to mind: personal take on a political issue, a newly discovered personal philosophy or a travel advice from a personal experience. As you might have guessed it, those examples contain “personal” which means it’s more about sharing personal thoughts and less on answering questions readers may be asking. It’s not a bad idea to have such topic as we are all entitled to write our own thoughts.

But if we write specific topics such as finance or fashion, we have to define our audience and create a persona about them. We can then try to identify what they might be looking for, a task that can be accomplished with keyword research. In doing so, we have a clearer idea of what topics to write, how to prioritize them and be assured that our defined audience will return to read our next blog entry.

Inconsistent with blog post frequency

In the beginning, bloggers may find it exciting to publish as much blog posts as possible. But as the excitement wanes, and the daily grind of identifying topics to write and writing these topics become more more burdensome, bloggers may find themselves skip publishing blogs for days or weeks. The longer the blog has been idle brings less motivation to write and reduce the volume of repeat visitors.

Sticking to a manageable frequency is the best way to keep up with consistency in blogging as this career is more a marathon than a sprint. You can start with one blog per month or per week, and stick with it. Once you have established a routine of one blog entry per month or per week, you can gradually try to do it more frequently and maintain consistency. Even if you might end up sticking back to the original frequency, your readers already expect that anyway.

Cover too many topics

Covering too many topics, your blog might not establish a niche topic. Without a niche topic, your blog may fail to attract loyal followers who look for certain topics — with an exception of your friends or if you are a popular personality before you embarked into the blogging scene. Without adopting a specific blog theme, your site might fail to attract attention of advertisers whose interest aligns with a few of your blog posts because your site holds no authority over the topic.

Fail to do keyword/topic research

Without researching what people are looking for, you could be writing articles that very few people are interested about. Although writing about a topic that you are an expert on and getting read by fewer site visitors is still worth doing, you might as well be sharing your expertise to a larger crowd when you do a prior keyword or topic research.

Fail to cite sources

Sometimes we need to use statistics to convey information in a more credible manner. However, we sometimes fail to give credit to sources who made the research, conducted the study or took the photo that contributed to the overall credibility of our blog. Adding these citations not only give credit to where credit is due, it also makes our blog entry more attractive reference to other researchers or site to link to from other websites.

Don’t include relatable examples, if applicable

There are blogs that are well-presented and provide a vivid description of its content that makes it easier to understand. There are also blogs that are full of abstract ideas and fail to provide examples that would have been easier for a reader to relate to. For example, if we write about tips on managing your sari-sari store in the Philippines. We not only aim to say we should sell fast moving consumer goods, but cite examples such as sugar, cooking oil or bread.

Don’t create attractive headlines

Our articles are as good as its headers. That’s because if our content is highly informative but paired with an unexciting headline, it might not attract clicks when it appears on search engine results because a) its headline does not connect well with content and b) other links on search results offer more intrigue and interest to get clicked. Using attractive titles help articles get the attention they deserve, and might be a catalyst for better search rankings.

Fail to engage audience

Some blogs don’t offer opportunity to engage with their readers. They don’t have social media accounts where visitors can share the article, no comment feature for visitors to write down their thoughts or email address that allow readers to leave a message. Getting user feedback is useful in understanding their reactions and can help influence what blog topic you might want to write next.

Poor content formatting and blog layout

Some blog posts are written in non-standard/readable typefaces and font sizes or they are published on odd background colors which are hard to read. They are written in continuous sentences with no paragraph breaks. These are just some examples of blogs that provide poor user experience and easily turn away visitors.

Presence of poor grammar and spelling mistakes

Nobody’s perfect but there should be some mechanism to ensure accuracy in spelling and grammar before publishing a blog post. A blog entry that contains several errors in subject-verb agreement, misusing its with it’s, or run-on sentences. A blog may be more casual and errors are more likely tolerated than press releases. But somehow, a blog with impeccably written content establishes itself with a good reputation.

Now that you know the common mistakes a newbie blogger can make, it is something that you should at least try to avoid when you start your blog. Having a well-written blog post that is presented in a user-friendly platform will invite a reader to return for the next blog post. This reader is also likely to share your blog to others. Otherwise, a post riddled with mistakes can easily turn off a visitors even before he or she finishes reading your article.